Amazon has finally raised its wages, thanks to the mounting pressure from governmental agencies and civic groups – but the dream of the $15 minimum wage hasn’t brought the desired outcome for the workers.
According to a Guardian report, the employees at Amazon’s Whole Foods grocery store chain have experienced a massive drop in schedule shifts as soon as their wages were raised.
Hence, the improved wages aren’t working out and most of the employees are experiencing an overall negative effect on their earnings.
Whole Foods was purchased by Amazon back in 2017.
On November 1, the company raised its minimum hourly wage to $15 for the entry-level positions. It also gave a raise of $1 to $2 in hourly wages of its higher-level employees, The Guardian reports.
However, after the new wages were enacted, the Whole Foods employees say they have experienced “widespread cuts that have reduced schedule shifts across many stores, often negating wage gains for employees,” the outlet notes.
Some employees, who sought anonymity “for fear of retaliation” told The Guardian that they’ve experienced around 10% reduction in hours per week for full-timers and a 30% reduction for part-timers.
“My hours went from 30 to 20 a week,” after the wage hike, an Illinois-based worker told the news outlet.
The employee said that “once the $15 minimum wage was enacted, part-time employee hours at their store were cut from an average of 30 to 21 hours a week, and full-time employees saw average hours reduced from 37.5 hours to 34.5 hours,” The Guardian reports.
“The worker provided schedules from November 1st to the end of January 2019, showing hours for workers in their department significantly decreased as the department’s percentage of the entire store labor budget stayed relatively the same.”
The anonymous employee further revealed how the company expects its workers to enhance their productivity so that their decreased hours can balance the cost of the wage hike.
A Whole Foods employee from Oregon said the company has reduced the working hours of full-timers from 40 to just 36 or 38 hours a week.
An employee from Maryland said all full-time employees have suffered a four-hour reduction per week to 36 hours which has made the raise “pointless” because they are now “losing more than they gained”.
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